John's
by Ifyoulovemesmile
Summary: Dean enjoyed being surrounded by beautiful women. After inheriting his father's bar, he went about making sure he was able to do just that. Until he got a resume for a Castiel Novak. Since when was Castiel a dudes name?


One:

* * *

Dean Winchester loved having an office. Which was something the man never thought would be true.

Granted, it wasn't the normal just-upgraded-from-a-cubical-in-a-shitty-customer-service-job-and-thank-got-for-some-space office. It was relatively small and brick walled to match the brick walls of the buildings exterior. One side of the room was covered in shelves stocked to the brim with an assortment of liquor bottles and personal mementos. The only other piece of furniture was his desk that was set off in the corner below a window that gave him a view into the bar; _his_ bar.

'John's' had been his father's dream, and somehow in the six months since Dean had been put in charge it had become his dream as well.

Dean had been working as a mechanic when he got the phone call that changed his life's path. Mary Winchester had called her eldest son because her husband, John, had had a severe heart attack. He had been rushed to the hospital where the doctors were able to stabilize him. It turned out that the stress of the bar and already high blood pressure was too much for the Winchester patriarch. After a weekend of observation he was released to the care of his wife with a recommendation from the doctors to retire.

John was an abnormally stubborn man and would have written off the doctors' orders had Mary not intervened. She practically begged Dean to step in and take the business from her husband. Dean didn't need much convincing. He just wanted both of his parents to be alive and healthy.

The bar was already fairly popular when Dean took over. They had a steady cliental of local 'marathon drinkers' during the week and college students during the weekend, all of whom Dean grew to love. All it took were a few more strategically placed ads and 'John's' grew to one of the most popular bars in Lawrence.

It only took Dean a month to realize that there was nothing else he would rather be doing. What could possibly trump spending his waking hours listening to classic rock surrounded by beautiful women?

Dean didn't mean for it to happen. Not really. Coincidentally, the bar was understaffed when John had the heart attack, and Dean's first order of business was hiring staff. Was it his fault that the only applicants were women? Of course it wasn't. He had no choice.

Sam, Dean's younger brother, complained constantly that Dean was a sexual lawsuit waiting to happen (and he would know, being a Stanford bred lawyer and all) but Dean always waved his off. He loved his girls, and he treated them right.

So many women working the bar scene were belittled and harassed, but not when Dean was around. 'John's' gave them a safe place to work, flirt, and kick ass when they needed to.

Dean looked up from his work to watch his employees setting up for the night ahead. He watched as Madison Wolfe, the snarky bartender, and Hope Lynn Casey, the clueless yet lovable waitress, laughed over something only they understood.

The women of 'John's' had become his family, and he felt complete.

"Find anyone yet?"

Well, almost complete. While most of Dean's employees were great, there were the few bad apples. Namely Abby Don. The feisty redhead had been the newest bartender hired, and ended up being crazier than a bag of cats and twice as hard to control. To say firing her made Dean scared for his nuts was a vast understatement.

Hence why Dean had spend the morning combing through resumes. He looked up and over his shoulder at his brother. Sam had taken to stopping by 'John's' in the early evening after his day at the office but before opening hours. Dean hadn't quite decided if it was meant to bother him, or because his gigantic baby brother had a crush on one of the waitresses.

"Plenty," Dean grumbled, "But after Abby I'm feeling like I should reevaluate my hiring strategy."

"You mean you're going to hire a guy?" Sam asked in mock shock.

Dean spun in his chair then and smirked. "Obviously not. It's just hard to tell who's a ginger from a resume."

"I resent that," Charlie Bradbury shot at him as she passed the door. The waitress took time to toss her cherry red hair over her shoulder as she went.

The brothers chuckled. Charlie had been Dean's first hire as the owner and he had never regretted it. Charlie was almost overwhelmingly geeky, but the customers liked her constant stream of pop culture references.

"Dean, just pick the ones with the most experience and call them. How hard is that?" Without another word Sam left the office.

Sighing, Dean started doing just that. Only two stood out. A Bela Talbot and Castiel Novak. Their experience was right where Dean liked; more than nothing, but less than everything.

He called Bela first, and the phone was answered by a sexy sounding woman with a crisp accent. Dean liked her immediately and scheduled her interview for the next day. When he called Castiel, and damn if that name wasn't exotic as fuck, he got an automated voice mail. Dean hated those, because he liked to get a feel for the person before the first meeting, but asked the woman to come in the next morning anyway.

Feeling like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders, be left the office and passed into the bar proper. With a wide smile he whistled and called the womens' attention to him.

"Who's hungry? I'm feelin' like tacos."

* * *

The tacos were a bad idea. The first bite had tasted funny, but Dean wrote it off as weird seasoning. He figured it was more than that early the next morning as he moaned and groaned and emptied his stomach into the toilet.

With his face pressed into the porcelain he heard his alarm go off on his cell phone. He chose to ignore it.

Only nine minutes later it went off again, and Dean cursed. Who invented the snooze function anyway? If he wanted to ignore his duties that's his own damn choice. Dean wasn't sure if he could walk, so he made his way to the bedside table in a crawl. He finally shut off the alarm with too much force and a muffled, "son of a bitch," before promptly crawling back to the bathroom (cellphone in hand, in case any assholes decide they wanted to call him).

Not ten minutes later and his phone rings. He looked beadily down at the screen to see it's Jo, one of his bartenders and the manager for all intents and purposes.

"What?" He rasps into the phone. His stomach revolts and he moves the phone away to dry heave into the toilet.

_"Well, good morning boss. You sound chipper,"_ Jo says too brightly. She always got some sick delight in seeing Dean in pain.

"What'dya want, Jo?" Dean asked not completely unkindly.

_"I was in doing ordering for the weekend when some brunette in a skimpy blue dress came in for an interview. I'm guessing you're not coming down and I'm gonna have to do your damn job. That sound about right?"_ Jo was always the best at sarcasm.

And, damn the tacos for making Dean miss a skimpy blue dress.

"If you do I'll buy you a beer," Dean finally says.

_"You'll buy me a six pack and finally give me that raise you promised me,"_ Jo counter offers.

"Done," Dean concedes. He's about to hang up, but stops at the last moment. "Jo!"

_"What?"_ She asks.

"Make sure whoever you hire is hot," Dean says in what he hopes in his 'boss' voice.

Jo scoffs. _"Well, obviously. Have fun puking!"_

Dean just groans and falls back asleep with his cheek pressed against the tile.

* * *

Two hours later Dean wakes to a text message from Jo.

_Bela was a crazy bitch. Hired Castiel instead. Don't worry, super hot._ _Gonna start training tonight. Don't worry about coming in._

Dean read it twice, and got the feeling that Jo was hiding something.

Maybe it was the tacos, or maybe he just trusted Jo too much, but for whatever reason Dean took her at her word and slowly picked himself off the floor. His knees wobbled, but didn't give out, and Dean was able to make it back into bed.

Sleep overtook him before he could think about the mysterious Castiel. He wondered if Jo's idea of hot was the same as his, but he thought so.

* * *

Jo she saw Sam take a seat in front of her out of her peripheral vision and looked up.

Sam, however wasn't looking at her and instead was watching the new bartender.

"Dean's going to kill you. You know that, right?" Sam said as he finally turned to her with a brow already raised.

Jo half regarded Sam, but half watched as Castiel mixed a sorority sister's cosmopolitain. The young blonde pressed her breasts against the bar, and Castiel smiled. His dark hair was mused just right, and as he smiled at the twenty-something year old little crows feet appeared in the corners of his blue eyes. Castiel had been flirting and mixing drinks all night, and it was all perfectly done.

"He technically only asked that _whoever_ I hire is hot, I did that," Jo commented as the blonde slipped a twenty into the small pocket on the front of Castiel's T-shirt.

"Come on, Jo. You _know_ what he meant." Jo sensed a weird tone in the younger Winchesters voice and turned to see Sam's raised brow had turned into a smirk. "This is going to be so fun to watch."

Jo couldn't help but agree.

* * *

At Jo's insistence Dean took the next two days off. It wasn't something the man normally did, but after eating Satan's tacos he figured he deserved it. Thursday was spent in the fetal position on his bed. He alternated between dry heaving, sleeping and wishing horrible death on whoever didn't wash their hands between the crapper and the carnitas.

On Friday Dean made his way from his bed to the couch, where he caught up on the Dr. Sexy he had missed over the last couple of weeks. There was nothing like a medical drama ("It's a soap opera, Dean!" Sam had told him. Dean ignored that) to sooth an upset stomach. Seeing men with jaundice and puss seepage tended to make food poisoning look not so bad.

When Saturday dawned, bright and early, Dean felt like a new man. He showered, taking extra Dean-time, dressed and drove the Impala towards 'John's'.

It was already shaping up to a beautiful day. The sun was out, and there wasn't a cloud in sight.

His mood stayed chipper as he parked in front of the bar and unlocked the front door. The normal smells of whiskey and wood flooded him and he took moment to inhale the scents deeply. Dean dropped his keys in the office and checked the time on his watch. Just past noon, which gave Dean plenty of time to get his work done before the evening rush.

Dean past the time doing the books for the last week, all the while singing along to the Led Zeppelin blasting through the speakers. During a particularly off-key version of Immigrant Song Dean was startled by knocking on his office door.

Standing in the doorway was a man with a strange look on his face; something between amusement and concern. Dean picked up the stereo remote and muted the music with the press of a button.

"Is there something I can help you with? We don't open for another couple of hours and I'm pretty sure were not gettin' any deliveries today," Dean asked as he took in the sight of the other man. He supposed there was something nice about the dark hair and blue eyes, if you were into that sort of this. Dean cleared his throat and flushed when he realized he had been staring.

"Oh, no, I'm not a deliver man. I'm Castiel Novak, your new bartender," the man replied it what had to be the deepest voice Dean had heard outside of Gotham. Then what the guy said processed.

Castiel Novak the new bartender. The new _male_ bartender.

He was going to kill Jo.


End file.
